Endorsements carry weight, just not votes

J. Patrick Coolican and Michael J. Mishak

Thursday, June 14, 2007 | 8:02 a.m.

Tom Mechling was a Nevada Democrat running a strong race for the U.S. Senate by trashing Pat McCarran, the state's other senator, a fellow Democrat and the boss of a powerful political machine.

Naturally, McCarran responded by declining to endorse Mechling in the 1952 Senate race.

And Mechling lost.

This story, told by Nevada historian Michael Green, illustrates the power of political endorsements and nonendorsements in days gone by, when people listened to authority figures such as political and union bosses and business moguls and often followed their commandments at the ballot box.

Political choices now are more complex, however. People don't take their political cues from prominent figures much anymore, political scientists say. As a result, the Nevada endorsements being bandied about by presidential candidates - such as Dina Titus' endorsement this week of Sen. Hillary Clinton - are in some ways meaningless.

Arthur Sanders, chair man of the politics and international relations department at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, said endorsements no longer carry the political weight they did a generation or two ago because the electorate has easy access to information about candidates, culled from a variety of sources beyond a ward boss or their state senator. Many voters prefer to make up their own minds.

In a caucus, where the electorate is smaller and more partisan, endorsements rarely work as a voter recruiting tool - although they can have something more valuable to offer, Sanders said. They can provide foot soldiers.

Nevada Democrats will gather Jan. 19 for their caucus es to declare their support for candidates publicly. Getting those Democrats to caucus sites across the state and persuading them to speak up will require a bottom-up, ready-made organization.

Titus comes with what became known during her failed 2006 run for governor as Team Titus, a group of at least 70 devoted volunteers. Whether they'll support and work for Clinton just because of the Titus endorsement is an open question, especially because they represent the most liberal of Nevada Democrats, while Clinton has positioned herself as a moderate in recent years.

Nevertheless, the idea of a ready-made organization of volunteers was clearly in the calculation of Clinton's courtship of Titus, the state Senate minority leader.

"It's not that the endorsement in and of itself convinces anybody to support you," Sanders said. "It's the organization that comes along with it."

Even then, endorsements are no guarantee, Sanders said.

For instance, in 2004, Sen. Tom Harkin, an influential player in his home state of Iowa's caucuses, endorsed Howard Dean, and lent his political operation to the Vermont governor's campaign. Despite the coveted endorsement, Dean finished third, behind Sen. John Kerry and then-Sen. John Edwards, and soon lost the nomination.

Titus will cultivate support among women as co-chair woman of the campaign's "Women of the West" initiative, even though her support among women in the 2006 election was far from dominant.

A CNN exit poll of last year's governor's race found that Titus split the female vote evenly with Republican Jim Gibbons, even though in the final days of the election he faced a police investigation into his behavior with a cocktail waitress in a parking garage.

Tellingly, one of Clinton's chief rivals, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois , passed on seeking a Titus endorsement. Instead, he dispatched his wife to Las Vegas, where on Wednesday she hosted a "Women for Obama" event.

More than 100 women packed a meeting room at the Cambridge Recreation Center to hear Michelle Obama, a hospital administrator who has reduced her work schedule to help her husband's campaign.

She related the details of meeting Obama, sketched their biographies and pitched her husband as the candidate best equipped to deal with the struggles women and families face.

And then: "We need a man - a person who happens to be a man - who can connect with these issues and is ready to turn the page."

Nevadans should almost certainly expect visits from another skilled political spouse, this one well-known in Nevada, having won it twice in his own presidential runs: Bill Clinton.